Poetry is what gets lost in translation-Robert Frost

January 17, 2018

Lulu In The Sky

I was curious to read Loung Ung's story about how she became an activist and how she came to write her first book, First They Killed My Father, in Lulu in the Sky: A Daughter of Cambodia Find Love, Healing, and Double Happiness (2014). However, I have to admit the first third of the book about her time at Saint Michael's College and her crush on classmate Mark (whom she eventually married) was a bit of a chore to get through. I thought it got more interesting when she recalled her experiences working for an anti-land mine NPO and returning to spend lengthy amounts of time in Cambodia to visit families and records stories of people who survived the genocide. I supposed the content of this book is far less dramatic than the previous two, but it is good to get a sense of closure about her experience of surviving the Khmer Rouge work camps to a happy successful life as a writer/activist and living with the trauma of surviving such horrific experiences.